1 Goldgulden - John III Sigismund

John Sigismund became Elector of Brandenburg in 1608 and spent much of his reign navigating the catastrophically tangled Jülich-Cleves succession crisis, which drew in half the major powers of Europe and nearly triggered a general war before Henri IV's assassination in 1610 defused the immediate conflict. His conversion to Calvinism in 1613 — the only Hohenzollern elector ever to make that switch — created immediate friction with his stubbornly Lutheran subjects and shaped the political atmosphere under which this gulden was struck.

The Franconian goldgulden standard at .986 fine was already archaic by the second decade of the seventeenth century, with the heavier Rhenish gold trade coinage rapidly displacing it across the northern principalities.